The Many Different Ways To Be Quiet
by CatHatGirl
Summary: Mandy and Junior discover a new kind of beauty, a new kind of feeling, and several new kinds of silence. MandyXJunior. Please R&R. MAJOR fluff-- just so you know.


**Disclaimer: I do not own The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. Maxwell Atoms created it, not me.**

**A/N: To all those who reviewed my last story, thank you very much. This will be the second story I upload, and I look forward to hearing your opinions on it. Enjoy.**

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"Oh, come on."

"I'm serious!"

They sat on the old park bench, wind blowing through the trees.

"I'm not."

"You are!"

Mandy and Junior were seated together on a park bench. By now each one was

fifteen years old, and they had acquired a fairly steady friendship. They talked a lot together, and it was nice to stop and chat when they saw each other in unexpected places, like the park. They talked about plenty of different things, and not many topics were foreign to them. So it had come as a surprise to both when the conversation had taken an unexpected turn.

"But it's true!" Junior said.

"It's not."

"I'm serious!"

"No way," Mandy said. "Not true."

"But you are!"

"No," she said. "I'm really not."

"You are," Junior persisted. "You're an attractive person. I mean it."

"Uh huh," she said. "Sure."

"No, seriously! You are!"

Mandy stared at him, one eyebrow raised skeptically.

"I find it amazing that you can say that with a straight face."

When Mandy was younger, perhaps about six or seven years old, her parents had used to dress her up in these lacy little floral-print church dresses for social occasions. She had looked presentable, but not, well, _good_. Dinner guests would come in, take one look at her, and then for a split second they would make this face like something had died right next to her. Only for a second, but Mandy always caught it. It was the "Oh-God-They-Have-An-Ugly-Kid-What-Should-I-Say" face. Then they would pay her the one generic compliment they all felt they owed her, maybe to help hide the fact that none of them thought she deserved it. "What a pretty dress." And, of course, nobody thought that was true, either.

By the time Mandy had turned nine, her parents had just sort of stopped bothering. Guests and relatives came and went, and her mother and father let their little goose-among-ducks wear whatever she wanted. After a while, the guests had caught on, too, and they stopped trying to compliment her. It had been a long time, perhaps five or six years, then, that someone had tried to tell her she looked pretty.

"Mandy, I really think so," Junior said again. "Why don't you believe me?"

"Because it's not true and we both know it," Mandy said matter-of-factly. "Trust me, people have told me that before and it was obvious they were lying."

"Well, I'm not lying," Junior said. "I really think you're pretty."

Instead of telling him to shut up and ending the matter altogether, she decided to toy with him.

"Oh, yeah?" she said. "Like how?"

"Well...," he said. Then he stopped, his voice trailing off. There was a lengthy quiet. Mandy rolled her eyes.

"I knew it."

But instead of laughing apologetically and looking down at his feet, Junior just kept staring at her.

"Junior?" she said. "You okay?"

Ignoring her, Junior kept looking at Mandy as if searching for something; his eyes flickered across her ears, her mouth, her hair. A new silence, strange and delicate, filled the air around them. For a long time, nothing happened. Then, a voice. His voice.

"The shape of your face," he said slowly.

"What?"

"Your face," he said again. "It... it's unusual to see a face like yours, because it's really round. You don't really see that a lot on TV or anything; it's not really fashionable, so people don't like it. But..." he pause again, searching for words. "...but...

it... it's... well, it's kind of a classic beauty. Like a Greek statue, you know? Round-faced. Classic."

Mandy stared at him quizzically. Classic? That wasn't exactly the word _she'd _have used. Junior looked at her again, then opened his mouth slowly to speak once more.

"And...," he said, his eyebrows lowered with the concentration of one really critiquing a piece of art, "...and your hair."

"What about my hair?" she said. "It's stick-straight, it's unruly, and it's the color of overripe corn."

"Sometimes it's yellow," he said, "sometimes it's silver-blonde. Depends on the light. Trust me, I've noticed. It... it's really cool."

Mandy blushed a little, despite herself.

"Shut up."

"No! I'm serious!" he said. "I mean... it's just so... Your hair-- your face-- "

Suddenly he fell silent once more. He stared down at his pale hands resting on his lap; stared or a very long time."

"...Your eyes," he said at last, so quietly that she practically had to lean forward to hear him.

When he looked back up there was something different in his expression. Gone was the look of the thoughtful art critic. Gone was the quiet boy with the apologetic grin. And here, if only for fleeting moment, was a man filled with an awe so brilliant that it burned like a coal inside him; an awe so great that it ached.

She answered him finally, only to find that she couldn't speak any louder that he. The silence was contagious.

"My... what?"

"Your eyes," he repeated. "They're so-- big and deep and black-- it's-- amazing."

He wasn't looking at her; he just stared straight forward into space.

"I mean," Junior said. He didn't seem to be saying quite what he wanted to say. "I mean... your eyes... they're so... big-- and deep-- and-- black-- god, I'm not saying it right..."

Frustrated, he looked back over at her. His gaze channeled the strange, elemental emotion straight at her, penetrating her with it. She shivered and glanced away, then back at him.

"Mandy," he said, his voice slow and intense, "your eyes are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life."

They stared at each other for another long moment. Yet another kind of quiet, a thick, hot silence filled the air. They shuffled uncomfortably, but were transfixed. What's more, they were each suddenly frightened by this spell they seemed to hold over each other. They knew this silence; it was the one you would see in movies. Both of them had at some point seen _It's a Wonderful Life_, an old, black-and-white Christmas movie that showed every year on three different channels. This reminded them strangely, and

forebodingly, of the telephone scene.

In the telephone scene, the leading man and the leading woman are both trying to talk on the same phone at the same time, because the speaker on the other end has some urgent news for both of them. They become tangled in the telephone chord in such a way that they are standing inches from each other's faces. And then suddenly, a strange kind of spell comes over both of them, and they stop listening and just stare at each other. Then, the _silence_. Then, the lead man drops the phone and they begin to kiss furiously.

Now what were Mandy and Junior supposed to do? Was it indeed... _that kind of silence?_ And if it was... what came next? Would they kiss? Would they forget the world and break into a mad embrace? How far was this spontaneous feeling going to take them, and... where would they end up?

They each sat there, their unspoken imaginations going in wilder and wilder directions. Then, suddenly, Junior gasped and Mandy did, too, because they each realized that they had been forgetting to breathe. The frightening and hypnotic spell was then broken, and they each sat there, breathing. Junior looked down, then up at Mandy again, and laughed. She sighed back at him, relieved.

"How's...," Junior fumbled with the words, "how's... your biology paper coming?"

"Not good," Mandy said quickly, grateful for something else to talk about.

"..._I KNOW, RIGHT?!_" Junior said, perhaps a little more loudly than he had meant to. "I mean. what's so important about a nucleus that we've got to write three pages about it?"

"I know..."

And so they talked about other things for a while; this and that, how are things going, how's Billy, and what's your dad doing these days. They were content once again just to talk, neither one of them daring to mention the big, gigantic "THAT WAS CLOSE." hanging over their heads in bold, black letters.

Finally, they decided that it was about time they went on their way. Mandy stood up, and Junior stood up, and they turned to go their separate ways.

"It was... it was nice talking to you, Junior."

"Y- yeah," Junior replied in that quiet, nervous manner of his.

They both began to head off, then Junior turned around and said, "Mandy."

"What?" she said, turning back around.

"I, um, I really think you're beautiful, though."

Silence again, but the good kind of silence.

"I... I just wanted you to know I mean it. You're beautiful, Mandy."

They each paused, then stepped closer again, slowly. She put her arms around him, and her fingers locked behind his back. His lips brushed hers for a moment-- just a moment-- before they rested on her cheek. She did the same to him, and they stepped gently back again, like two artists leaning back to look at an unfinished painting forming between them.

"Thank you, Junior."

They stood gazing at each other for a full minute, then turned again to go. A pleasant kind of quiet, save for the wind in the trees, surrounded them as they went.


End file.
